This Has to Stop

[Astonished]

Again, never said I wasn't. But I give even better than I get, so while someone may be being bitchy with me, I'll definitely reciprocate with even more ferocity.

Lol after all the heinous stuff you said to me, I'm the one being bitchy with you... interesting

I'm not the only one pointing out you're misconstruing what I've been saying and ignoring it when corrected. I'd call that pretty bitchy since you then don't get to use ignorance as an excuse.

[emjay]

FWIW Astonished, I don't think you're a douche. I actually find you quite inspiring. I'm not a militant anti-theist by nature... I'm not a militant anything by nature... but sometimes, I think it's only activists that stand between us and a world dominated by religious delusion and all the harm it brings... so from that perspective, when I see raging anti-theists in action... giving it both barrels and not beating around the bush, I'm inspired... and grateful.

[Astonished]

FWIW Astonished, I don't think you're a douche.

Really? I guess I'm not trying hard enough, LOL.

I actually find you quite inspiring. I'm not a militant anti-theist by nature... I'm not a militant anything by nature... but sometimes, I think it's only activists that stand between us and a world dominated by religious delusion and all the harm it brings... so from that perspective, when I see raging anti-theists in action... giving it both barrels and not beating around the bush, I'm inspired... and grateful.

I actually found your earlier post inspiring; I wasn't of the mind that simply presenting the material (in a fair and balanced way, albeit unrealistic for parents to actually be able to do so in an unbiased manner) would cause those kinds of problems as outright brainwashing style indoctrination, but you made a good point, and the idea of hell not being a factor in any case at all, that was pretty swell.

I tend to look at the brainwashed as victims up to a certain point. Once they start becoming agents of the faith and start spreading it like the virus that it is, I can't look at them as victims anymore, I have to see them as threats. It's like people living in the Matrix, I'm okay with them being under that umbrella when we're trying to unplug them but once they get taken over by Smith and start turning others into duplicates of them, fuck 'em.

[emjay]

FWIW Astonished, I don't think you're a douche.

Really? I guess I'm not trying hard enough, LOL.

Well put it another way, even if you are being a douche, that comes with the territory of giving it both barrels... you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of thing

I actually find you quite inspiring. I'm not a militant anti-theist by nature... I'm not a militant anything by nature... but sometimes, I think it's only activists that stand between us and a world dominated by religious delusion and all the harm it brings... so from that perspective, when I see raging anti-theists in action... giving it both barrels and not beating around the bush, I'm inspired... and grateful.

I actually found your earlier post inspiring; I wasn't of the mind that simply presenting the material (in a fair and balanced way, albeit unrealistic for parents to actually be able to do so in an unbiased manner) would cause those kinds of problems as outright brainwashing style indoctrination, but you made a good point, and the idea of hell not being a factor in any case at all, that was pretty swell.

Thanks. Well there's a fine line between teaching and indoctrination, and nobody knows where it is, but in my own case it wasn't browbeaten into me but nonetheless I do see it as indoctrination, unwitting as it may have been. If all you do is talk about it, and all your friends are involved in it, your whole social circle is involved with it, that constant exposure, even if it's only incidental as it were, can't fail to make lasting impressions on young minds... as it did with me. So I still have to deal with the emotional baggage of all that even though rationally I'm an atheist; I have beliefs and associated doubts instilled that did not come through reason but are nonetheless there, and shouldn't be because I never gave informed consent for them to be there.

I tend to look at the brainwashed as victims up to a certain point. Once they start becoming agents of the faith and start spreading it like the virus that it is, I can't look at them as victims anymore, I have to see them as threats. It's like people living in the Matrix, I'm okay with them being under that umbrella when we're trying to unplug them but once they get taken over by Smith and start turning others into duplicates of them, fuck 'em.

I share that view, some of the time but not all of the time; sometimes I'm more angry with religion than others.

[Amarok]

Wether you said you weren't or not is of no concern to me . And no your rhetoric is massively disproportionate to anything CL has said on this thread. Sorry that excuse won't help you .

---

Well put it another way, even if you are being a douche, that comes with the territory of giving it both barrels... you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of thing

Except people are not eggs

---

I'm not the only one pointing out you're misconstruing what I've been saying and ignoring it when corrected. I'd call that pretty bitchy since you then don't get to use ignorance as an excuse.

An event I have yet to observer and i'm far from the only one. I however see you hurling abuse .If you don't believe me look at the kudos

[emjay]

Well put it another way, even if you are being a douche, that comes with the territory of giving it both barrels... you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of thing

Except people are not eggs

Whatever dude. When I first came to this site I got torn to pieces by anti-theists, and that was an atheist; they just thought I was making religious arguments when I was just playing devil's advocate. But those people that tore me apart, I've now come to respect for doing that very thing. You need a thick skin on this site, and that helped develop whatever semblance I have of one.

[Astonished]

Wether you said you weren't or not is of no concern to me . And no your rhetoric is massively disproportionate to anything CL has said on this thread. Sorry that excuse won't help you .

---

Well put it another way, even if you are being a douche, that comes with the territory of giving it both barrels... you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs kind of thing

Except people are not eggs

---

I'm not the only one pointing out you're misconstruing what I've been saying and ignoring it when corrected. I'd call that pretty bitchy since you then don't get to use ignorance as an excuse.

An event I have yet to observer and i'm far from the only one. I however see you hurling abuse .If you don't believe me look at the kudos

I'm not making excuses, I'm explaining why I'm doing it and will continue to do so. Excuses are for when you're sorry. I'm not.

She repeatedly equated my rant against those who willfully brainwash a child in the most cynical of ways with the more passive teaching of it (the latter being the sort I was raised with, and was easily able to extricate myself from, hence my less stringent opinion on that). I corrected her on this at least twice and was ignored on both counts because, I guess, she just wanted to be mad about something. Not exactly her taking a high road here. She pretty much gave me no reason to hold back so I dived in. And like I said, most people on here were making the same point as me but just not being assholes about it. Hell, they even brought up a side of it I wasn't even willing to go to; teaching it as a fairy tail in the same sense as Jack and the Beanstalk seemed innocuous enough to me but apparently even that's a slippery slope. I didn't exactly believe anyone would really be able to present religion to their kids in that sort of way but in theory I figured if done that way, they'd be as critical of it at a young age as I was. Apparently it's more complicated than that either way.

emjay, I get the sentiment behind attacking someone playing devil's advocate, I honestly could not adopt that position because there is literally nothing about religion I find possible to defend even in a hypothetical situation. I normally do my best writing when I approach it from the opposing side of that which I hold when writing essays because it forces me to work harder and do more research and see more perspectives. But this is just not one of those issues, and I've actually found it quite cathartic when I can submit a paper denigrating religion in an academic environment, although so far I've only had one opportunity to do so. I've heard all the arguments, seen every perspective, and it's all shit.

[Angrboda]

Meh. Parents pass on their beliefs to their children under conditions in which it is unlikely for the child to doubt. If you want to call that indoctrination, then yes, I believe parents have the right to indoctrinate their children into their religious beliefs. Somewhere along the line you have to make the case that having religious beliefs is an evil unto itself in order to make the case that transmitting their religious beliefs in this manner is immoral. Parents "indoctrinate" their children into a lot of beliefs. I don't think it makes sense to interfere with the process by which we transmit our culture to our children. What are you suggesting? Criminal penalties if "teaching" passes over into "indoctrination"? I don't personally believe that the way a family transmits its culture to its children can be characterized that simply. Children are taught the concepts of religion. That's more than half the battle toward getting them to believe. Is that indoctrination? I don't think so.

[Astonished]

Meh.  Parents pass on their beliefs to their children under conditions in which it is unlikely for the child to doubt.  If you want to call that indoctrination, then yes, I believe parents have the right to indoctrinate their children into their religious beliefs.  Somewhere along the line you have to make the case that having religious beliefs is an evil unto itself in order to make the case that transmitting their religious beliefs in this manner is immoral.  Parents "indoctrinate" their children into a lot of beliefs.  I don't think it makes sense to interfere with the process by which we transmit our culture to our children.  What are you suggesting?  Criminal penalties if "teaching" passes over into "indoctrination"?  I don't personally believe that the way a family transmits its culture to its children can be characterized that simply.  Children are taught the concepts of religion.  That's more than half the battle toward getting them to believe.  Is that indoctrination?  I don't think so.

I'm talking about assholes like Ken Ham who deliberately lie to children about science and whatnot to push a specific agenda, not just Xtian shit but HIS version of YEC, when he's been called out repeatedly for these falsehoods and is not being charged with fraud and allowed to continue to do what he's doing to those kids with impunity. Complete biasing of facts and setting them up for utter denial of reality without their knowledge or consent, not even to consider the possibility that they could ever be wrong about it, THAT is the kind of shit that should not be tolerated. Not the passive read-them-heavily-edited-snippets before bedtime thing you see on TV and movies, and telling them 'I don't know' instead of 'gawd' as answers where appropriate. Things a reasonable, sane person would do. Someone like CL apparently doesn't give herself enough credit to think of herself as different from those other a-holes, or she just wasn't listening to the multiple attempts I tried at differentiating brainwashing/indoctrination from simple instruction or storytelling. Of course if it's the latter then maybe she's a bit more like Ken Ham than we might have hoped. The whole fingers-in-the-ears going 'la la la' thing isn't fashionable.

[Angrboda]

Meh.  Parents pass on their beliefs to their children under conditions in which it is unlikely for the child to doubt.  If you want to call that indoctrination, then yes, I believe parents have the right to indoctrinate their children into their religious beliefs.  Somewhere along the line you have to make the case that having religious beliefs is an evil unto itself in order to make the case that transmitting their religious beliefs in this manner is immoral.  Parents "indoctrinate" their children into a lot of beliefs.  I don't think it makes sense to interfere with the process by which we transmit our culture to our children.  What are you suggesting?  Criminal penalties if "teaching" passes over into "indoctrination"?  I don't personally believe that the way a family transmits its culture to its children can be characterized that simply.  Children are taught the concepts of religion.  That's more than half the battle toward getting them to believe.  Is that indoctrination?  I don't think so.

I'm talking about assholes like Ken Ham who deliberately lie to children about science and whatnot to push a specific agenda, not just Xtian shit but HIS version of YEC, when he's been called out repeatedly for these falsehoods and is not being charged with fraud and allowed to continue to do what he's doing to those kids with impunity. Complete biasing of facts and setting them up for utter denial of reality without their knowledge or consent, not even to consider the possibility that they could ever be wrong about it, THAT is the kind of shit that should not be tolerated. Not the passive read-them-heavily-edited-snippets before bedtime thing you see on TV and movies, and telling them 'I don't know' instead of 'gawd' as answers where appropriate. Things a reasonable, sane person would do. Someone like CL apparently doesn't give herself enough credit to think of herself as different from those other a-holes, or she just wasn't listening to the multiple attempts I tried at differentiating brainwashing/indoctrination from simple instruction or storytelling. Of course if it's the latter then maybe she's a bit more like Ken Ham than we might have hoped. The whole fingers-in-the-ears going 'la la la' thing isn't fashionable.

Ken Ham is certainly biased. Does that means he is being dishonest? That's an inference you're making. Whenever people of radically different beliefs clash, the tendency is for each side to attribute the actions of the other party to dishonesty, madness, or incompetence. I don't think matters are that simple. I think it's possible to be sufficiently biased not to notice the discrepancies you're claiming Ken Ham is guilty of. And again, you haven't shown that the beliefs themselves are wrong and evil. I truly think it's possible for two such radically polarized people as yourself and Ham to simply disagree.